


in those golden mornings (i am immortal)

by ultalumna (yujael)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Comfort No Hurt, M/M, Reincarnation, no beta we die and get reborn into better lives, that's a real tag kids can you believe?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 07:47:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21316660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yujael/pseuds/ultalumna
Summary: Noctis always knew there was a reason he liked those two better than all the other Astrals.
Relationships: Gladiolus Amicitia/Prompto Argentum/Noctis Lucis Caelum/Ignis Scientia
Comments: 15
Kudos: 260





	in those golden mornings (i am immortal)

_ This is a gift_, the Glacian says. 

_ One for a thousand_, the Fulgurian says. _ A thousand for one. _

\--

He finds Ignis first.

Before he even knows who they are, or that it’s the first of anything, Noctis finds Ignis. 

His family lives in a big, renovated farmhouse so far from the city that it’s barely even the outskirts still, surrounded by nothing but grass fields and a treeline that his father says fairies live in. Winters are harsh but summers are perfect. It’s on one of those summer days when Noctis is four and his uncles and aunts and cousins are visiting, that a boy falls out of the great apple tree on the very edge of what they consider to be their unfenced yard.

The boy isn’t anyone invited to the party. He’s thin and bony with windswept brown hair and intelligent green eyes behind lenses that are now cracked. He cries from the pain of having twisted his ankle and the embarrassment of having been caught exploring. 

Noctis goes to help him up because he’s closest and the adults haven’t noticed the commotion yet, but when he puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder it’s like a spark races across his whole body and cracks his head open, and then they’re both crying. 

The boy’s still in pain, reeling back from the touch, and Noctis is overwhelmed. Everything in his head is _ so much _ and he’s—he’s—

The adults come over. The boy—_the boy—the boy— _

Noctis’ father carries Ignis back through the trees, back to his own home. He comes back and says that Ignis will come over to apologize for hurting Noctis later. Their extended family departs and the sun goes down long before Noctis can explain that he wasn’t hurt at all, before he can say, with the mental reflexes of one much older than four years, that he wants to go apologize because it was his fault, too.

His father looks proud. Noctis almost starts crying all over again.

They go over, through the trees where fairies supposedly live. Ignis’ parents have grounded him, but he’s watching from a window high on the second storey when Noctis arrives. His parents let Noctis come in, pointing him up the stairs and then congratulating his father on raising such a polite and responsible boy.

It’s just as well that they’re alone when Noctis finds the right bedroom. They’re four and six and _ not_, and there are too many memories etched in their heads and hands and hearts.

“_Iggy_,” Noctis sobs as he launches himself on the bed. 

“Noct,” Ignis chokes into Noctis’ shoulder. “_Noct_.”

\-- 

They’re inseparable after that day, fingers laced for every day they couldn’t be. They go to the same school when the year starts, and it’s by complete accident that their teachers think they’re geniuses—Ignis is, but Noctis isn’t really even trying to apply himself. He’s four and not and it’s so hard, some days, to pretend that he doesn’t know how to stand taller than gods. 

Ignis is bumped a grade ahead. Noctis allows his memories to guide his hand just enough to get bumped into the same class, refusing to be apart. He’s glad to have done so years down the road when they enter high school the same year Gladio does. They don’t even know it at first, not until they find him on the track field one day after school.

It’s Ignis’ fault again. He stays late after class, buried under books in the library, and Noctis fell asleep on the bench next to the exit they usually leave the building through while waiting for him. They’ve missed their bus home by the time Noctis is awake again, so they walk laps around the campus while they wait for one of Noctis’ cousins to pick them up. Two laps in, Noctis glances at the track ring and has the offhand thought that the lone runner kicking up red dust there runs a lot like Gladio, and then—

Long past the habit of addressing him as _ Majesty_, the one that had their parents chortling behind their hands at parties about their imaginations, Ignis still responds urgently to the low wheezing noise Noctis makes. “Noct? What is it?”

“He’s here,” Noctis says, raw, torn open again. He walks into the field, onto the track, unable to move anywhere but forward.

Gladio barrels toward him, clearly expecting him to move out of the way. He doesn’t. They go tumbling to the ground instead, rolling to the tune of Ignis calling out and Gladio snapping, “Holy sh—watch where you’re going!”

They sit up, skinned hands and knees untangling as they right themselves. It takes Gladio a moment longer than it does Noctis. Practically an age passes before he looks at Noctis like he means to get up and chew him out, except he comes back to himself crying and confused about why he’s crying.

He wipes his face with dusty hands and scowls when the tears don't stop. “Why the hell am I—”

Noctis can almost pinpoint the second things finish clicking into place, the moment coming less explosively than it did for Noctis when he was all of four and still learning words for emotions, let alone their place in his head. 

Gladio stares at him for a long time. Blinks up at Ignis standing in front of the sun for just as long, all full of shock and grief. Comes back to Noctis and almost reaches out—but pulls his hand back at the last second, cradling it close to his heart like he doesn’t want to risk breaking what’s in front of him.

“Hey, big guy,” Noctis says finally.

There are no words from Gladio. Just a short burst of air pushed through his teeth from some place deep inside, then another, and more until Ignis sinks down next to them and coaxes him to put his head between his knees. They stay huddled like that until Noctis’ cousin pulls into the school parking lot. 

Noctis’ cousin drives his new friend home, too, to a high rise in the city. It’s farther away than past the treeline that now bears a clear path straight through, but it never aches to see each other again. 

\-- 

Prompto isn’t enrolled in the same school system. They know this because Ignis is both good friends with the secretarial staff at their school and unrepentant in abusing it on a one-time-only basis when he happens to be alone behind the desk. 

It’s disappointing and not knowing where to look wears them thin on dark winter nights when the wind and snow are too heavy for Gladio to get out of the city and Noctis and Ignis have to huddle under extra blankets to stave off the cold. Ignis hushes him softly when he wonders on one such night if Prompto is even— 

Gladio doesn’t perfect the ability to sift through what he should and shouldn’t know as a young teenage boy for some time. He gets bumped into advanced classes and Ignis gladly follows, pulling Noctis along until they graduate early. Ignis is in his element when they enter post-secondary early, too, happy to devote more time to studying in the back seat of the car because Gladio is the only one old enough to drive legally. 

They move out of campus housing during their final year to a two-bedroom apartment just on the cusp of being conveniently located. Gladio can stop sneaking into Noctis’ and Ignis’ dorm where the narrow beds have been shoved together. They wait, a little less patient than the years before, until Gladio, out of breath, sails into the apartment after graduation with the mail and slams four things onto the dining table.

Three envelopes contain their recently obtained bachelors. Gladio’s in environmental studies, Ignis’ in food science, Noctis’ in biology. It all comes secondary to the magazine on top, its cover depicting—

“Prom!”

He’s there, eyes to the camera, airbrushed to perfection. He’s there, Ignis learns from the internet, on the other side of the country, to which Noctis says, “We never did take that gap year. Who’s in?”

—

They look like stalkers, Noctis notes entirely too late. They crossed the country, chasing the journey of Prompto’s photography and clippings of Prompto’s face like sailors lost at sea following a siren—

(—except the rhythm snags onto his deepest memories some nights, bent hooks digging for danger that no longer exists to reach his heart—) 

—hoping to pin down some idea of his location until, several hotel nights later, they find him on the street, shopping bags in hand. They find him walking in the sunlight, eyes on some distant, far away place, and Noctis cannot stay still.

Pain follows the brush of his fingers against Prompto’s elbow in short order. Had he any breath in his lungs to begin with it’d be gone as the man inconspicuously trailing Prompto brings him to the ground with his arm bent around his back just above the knee digging into his spine. 

Gladio and Ignis shout, their footsteps heavy against the pavement before they come to a sudden stop. Prompto’s voice drowns them out along with the sharp cut voice in Noctis’ ear.

“Cor! It’s okay, Cor! It’s okay! You can let him go, he’s not—I know him. He’s not—they won’t hurt me.”

Cor—_Cor_—lets up, yanking Noctis off the ground with some reluctance. Noctis doesn’t bother with dusting himself off, not when Prompto—_their Prompto_—is so close. He’s abandoned his shopping bags, his hands wringing together over his mouth instead, pressing tight against his lips while he struggles to keep it together. 

“You don’t know that,” Cor says, unconvinced by the way Prompto’s shoulders shake, the way he has to heave air into his lungs. 

Prompto shakes his head and pulls Noctis from Cor’s grip into his own, wrapping his arms around Noctis tighter and tighter. “I know them,” he says thickly. “I know them,” he says again and again into Noctis’ neck.

(—until the hooks are gone completely, the memories in their place new and weightless—) 

Prompto reaches back blindly with one hand, finds the watch on Gladio’s wrist first and hauls him in. Ignis follows automatically, huddling Prompto between them until a cool evening breeze reminds them that time marches ever forward.

“I’ll… go get the car,” Cor says, disappearing and reappearing with said vehicle as quickly as he can.

\-- 

Prompto’s home outside of town screams of his well-off upbringing and ample modelling paycheck. It’s massive, too big with too many floor to ceiling windows for just one person. His bodyguard lives in a cabin behind a hedge in the garden. There’s no logical explanation for the aquarium that takes up an entire wall or the amount of floor space for the small dog paws that come racing around the corner to slip across. 

Two dogs cozy up to Prompto’s knees, pausing only to sniff his shopping bags before moving on to press their noses against Noctis and Ignis and Gladio, tails wagging all the while. They sit patiently in front of Noctis until he kneels down to scratch behind their ears.

“I’m dog sitting for my cousin,” Prompto explains.

“For… your cousin,” Noctis repeats, eyes watering unbidden. Pryna licks the tears away before they can reach his chin. Umbra shoves his cold nose against his jaw.

“Come on, Noct,” Prompto says with a soft laugh. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember her.”

Noctis buries his face in dog fur briefly, resurfacing after Ignis and Gladio give the dogs a few pats of their own and then begin surveying the house. 

“I do,” he whispers. “I remember.”

Prompto grins. He could light the entire house with it. 

“What could you possibly need this much space for?” Gladio asks, voice booming on purpose so that it carries. 

Prompto folds his arms, shoulders pulled up to his ears to frame his sheepish smile. “I actually… I was—hoping, y’know? Ever since Luna and I were kids and we knew you guys were out there somewhere, I was hoping we’d find each other again. I was hoping this place could be… ours.”

He rubs his eyes and babbles on about saving pieces of his substantial allowance for years, looking for a place that they could one day call home; about all the space and how he wanted it so that they could make it so that it would never be lonely again; about all the space upstairs and how even though they might only need a couple rooms themselves, they still have room for guests. 

“I just—” he pauses, gasping once, twice. “I just had to wait, y’know? Until I found you guys. Or—or you found me—”

He stops babbling when Noctis kisses him. His hands stop waving around with every word when Ignis takes them in his own, fingers to his mouth. He stops shaking with every breath when Gladio wraps his arms around him from behind, lips against the crown of his head. 

The late golden sun fills the room through the windows, warming every breath and touch, their eyes when they pull themselves apart—when they pull themselves together all over again. 

“We found you,” Noctis murmurs.

“You found me,” Prompto says, raw and overjoyed. “Welcome home, guys.”

  
  
  
  
  


\--

Their voices boom across lifetimes. Noctis always knew there was a reason he liked them best out of all the Astrals. 

\--

  
  
  
  
  


He sees Ardyn once, glimpses him from across the street, seated at a round table outside a cafe. 

Ardyn sees him, too. He raises the cup in his hand a fraction of an inch and turns his attention back to a petite blonde woman seated across from him. 

The light turns. Noctis never sees him again.

**Author's Note:**

> After what feels like a thousand years I finally managed to figure out how to write again :D  
It figures that it'd be a reincarnation au to get it done. I've wanted to do one for ages and ages. What better way to spend my time is there than making characters cry with the happiness they deserve?


End file.
